Barrel House Permaculture is a private home and garden, which is used as a permaculture teaching and demonstration site by the various educational institutions in the Findhorn community, hosting approximately 600 people/year. Currently two people live here full-time, experimenting with a holistic sustainable lifestyle and being as close to self-sufficient in fruit and veg as possible. It also houses a pottery studio and woodfired kiln.

The house is one of the iconic Whisky Barrel Houses - a round tiny house built from a whisky vat previously used in the distilling industry. Over the years the house has been extended and added to, mostly using local and/or recycled materials, to adapt to growing number of occupants and their changing needs. It has solar panels, a woodstove with backboiler and rain water on tap in the kitchen.

The garden has changed greatly over the years. It was started in landscape dominated by sand dunes and littered with waste left over from the war, much of it toxic, and all covered by gorse, broom and elders, the pioneers species of the local ecosystem. Today the older part of the garden has mature fruit trees and shrubs interplanted with annual crops, as well as a greenhouse, pond, compost toilet and outdoor bathtub. The younger part of the garden is reclaimed construction site with abundant annual and perennial crops. Extremely free-ranging chickens contribute to the garden throughout.

Barrel House Permaculture is used as a learning venue for permaculture and sustainability courses. Coming course include

Permaculture Design Course (July 2019) see https://www.findhorncollege.org/course/permaculture-design-course/
Ecovillage Experience Week (August, September 2019) see https://www.findhorn.org/programmes/ecovillage-experience-week/

See a film about our Permaculture Design Course here https://youtu.be/tsFKP77BYfo

Being based in an ecovillage and spiritual community - we also bring our external environment into the project, exploring the links between spirituality and permaculture, hosting community meetings and events, and managing spaces for connecting with nature and the elements.

At Lackan Cottage Farm our aim has been to develop a smallholding that substantially meets a families needs for energy, food, water, fuel, waste and income.
It does this without subsidy, on a small budget, and our aim is to share what we learn with as many people as possible.
We do this in several ways – by offering courses, welcoming volunteers (for example through WWOOF), and by having visitors stay on site in accommodation where they can experience permaculture design and low impact living for themselves.

The 6 acre site comprises 1 acre of growing spaces and forest garden, 3 acres of woodland, 1.5 acres of pasture and 0.5 acres currently under conversion to coppice and forest garden.
We have many projects to demonstrate, including: natural building – straw bale, timber frame, earth plasters; rocket mass heater; grey water reed beds; solar PV power, wind turbine, battery storage; coppicing; basket willow plantation; forest garden; market gardening; rainwater harvesting; compost toilets; tiny homes; upcycled pallet building; willow fences; no dig gardening and more.
We welcome approximately 400 visitors a year, run many courses, and have hosted volunteers from all over the world.

A one acre domestic plot, showing food growing and wildlife care. A vegetable garden with no-dig raised beds on very poor stony soil. Soil building techiniques including composting, green manures and dynamic accumulators - all the fertility needed for growing food is harvested on site. A forest garden, with many different plants e.g. cobnuts, ugni, gogi, asian pear, cornelian cherry, elder, currants and herbs. A large original wildflower meadow which is undisturbed Cotswold limestone grassland, a relic habitat, now scarce. All managed for wildlife, which features native orchids, butterflies in abundance, rare crickets, rare bats, badgers, grass snakes, flowers and plants of the local flora. Among this you will see things we have added - an edible hedgerow, willow for basket making, trees for coppicing and fuel. All these elements are looked after and managed as an integrated Permaculture system. Set on a steep Cotswold slope with stunning views - these are many steps on the site.

Our open weekend this year is 10th and 11th September 10.30am to 4.30pm.  A free non-commercial opening of our home to show people cheaper ways to use less energy and grow their own food see;  https://t.co/qWWRc4ILJWGrowing our own food‘Bee friendly’ bee keeping, free range chickensSolar hot water and electricityWaste wood fired central heating and cookingRainwater harvestingGrey water filtering – bath water etc. (reed bed)Email; Chris or Rosie at [email protected]  for more details or click https://t.co/qWWRc4ILJWEcoDIY, Burrs Rd, Clacton   www.ecodiy.org

Edibles is based at Paddock Farm, West Slaithwaite in the beautiful Colne Valley. Residents Steve and Rosie have created a working permaculture farm with a unique venue, the Cowshed. We grow food year-round for sale locally and aim to inspire and train people to do the same. We have taught permaculture modules in our local High School and enjoy hosting meetings, group visits, students and volunteers. Our recently renovated Cowshed provides the focus for gatherings,courses and music events.

Our vision is to establish a viable business that makes a significant contribution to practical resilience building within our community by supporting more people to grow food, contributing to the skills and behaviour shifts to allow people to make changes to live more in tune with their beliefs.

The idea for a forest garden here evolved in 2011 after the local council granted us permission to use the area for an Incredible edible site. It was used by myself and my wife, Debbie for our PDC design at the end of our course in February 2012, after which we started work in March of that year. The 2 acre plot was partly wooded with an open area to the west which was mainly brambles. This is the area we created our forest garden with an enthusiastic bunch of volunteers and 3 years on the plot is developing into a beautiful garden with hundreds of edible trees, shrubs plants and ground cover planted, mostly donated by ourselves. We have had 2 successful open days with 200 and 300+ people coming along from the local community. We meet once a month on Sundays with extra evening sessions during the busy growing season.

Tap o' Noth Farm is an 8 acre small, mixed market farm and demonstration site and education site situated on the slopes of Tap o' Noth hill on the outskirts of the village of Rhynie in NE Scotland.
Tap o' Noth Farm produce ecologically grown produce (sold through a CSA scheme) and organise and run courses and workshops in the fields of ecological design, sustainable agriculture and re-skilling in traditional rural crafts and practices.

Our purpose designed demonstration site is a mixture of south facing sloping fields, mixed broadleaf woodland, pines, ponds and wetlands. While still a fledgling site, Tap o’ Noth Permaculture is growing at a rapid pace with ever expanding food gardens, poultry systems, polytunnels and fruit cages, worm farms, emerging forest gardens and agroforestry systems, main crop areas, swales, multifunctional/ multi species windbreak hedgerows, ponds, compost toilet facilities plus many more exciting and informative ecologically designed systems.

Open Wednesdays Thursday Fridays Saturdays 10-2